Legal Question in Intellectual Property in Texas

Re: contract for replication fee expires 2003

Certainly.

Your copyright on your costume designs, if you have not assigned the copyright, continues for you life plus 70 years. That is sufficient to justify many extensions.

Have you registered your copyright? If not, you need to be doing that so that your rights are of public record.

Re: contract for replication fee expires 2003

It all comes down to negotiating leverage. If the copyright owner wants to make the costumes in-house and is paying you the replication fee, then you probably don't have much negotiating leverage, UNLESS there is a service you can provide that the in-house folks can't.

Additionally, being called the designer of the "original character" isn't as helpful as if you had been called the "exclusive designer of the Barney character".

In short, you don't raise any facts indiciating that you have intellectual property rights enforceable against the copyright holder in this situation.

I am an intellectual property attorney and law school professor. Feel free to contact me if I can be of further assistance.

Re: contract for replication fee expires 2003

Other replies to this question have missed the point. What you described is the following legal scenario:

Character Company (CC) owns various rights in a certain character (B), including copyright. You have a contract with CC to design and produce costumes of B. The contract provides that you do not own copyright in these derivative works; I speculate here that it provides language granting back to CC any copyright that you would otherwise have in the derivative works, and also work-made-for-hire language. Further, the contract provides that CC pays you a replication fee when they copy your costume designs.

Based upon the above scenario, your renewal rights, if any, are goverend solely by the contract. Likewise, CC's continuing obligation to pay your replication fee would exist only if the contract so provides.

Now, if the contract fails to deal with the copyright issue as suggested above, you may have copyright in the derivative works, and that would change the negotiating situation.

Bottom line: have an attorney review the contract and advise you of your rights.